Right Sector

Name

The organization's name in Ukrainian is Правий сектор, which can be transliterated as Pravyy sektor and translated as Right Sector. (General-audience publications often transliterate it as Pravy Sektor or Pravyi Sektor.) The name is derived from the group's effort to protect the right side of the Euromaidan protestors at one point during the protests. Dmytro Yarosh is the owner of the trademark "Right Sector".

Origins

Right Sector formed in late November 2013 as a confederation of streetfighting soccer fans and right-wing nationalist groups: Patriot of Ukraine (Andriy Belitsky), the Social-National Assembly, Trident (Dmytro Yarosh), UNA–UNSO (Yuriy Shukhevych), White Hammer, and Carpathian Sich. The BBC reports that Right Sector's Kiev organization is primarily formed by Russian-speaking soccer fans who share nationalist views.

The organization views itself within the tradition of Ukrainian partisans, such as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought in the Second World War against the Soviet Union and both for and against Axis. Yarosh, Right Sector's leader, has trained armed nationalists in military exercises since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Co-founder Andriy Tarasenko told LIGA news agency in January 2014 that most participants were "ordinary citizens not related to any organizations".

Right Sector claims to have received donations from the Ukrainian diaspora.

Entry into Euromaidan

Right Sector became one of the main actors in the January 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots, a part of the Euromaidan protests, in their later and more violent stages. On 19 January 2014 the organization encouraged its members to bring bottles to the protests in order to produce Molotov cocktails and bombs. The Yanukovich government classified it as an extremist movement and threatened its members with imprisonment.

Right Sector has been described as the most organized and most effective of the Euromaidan forces when it came to confronting police. Right Sector claims that it was the main organizer of violent resistance against armed attacks by the state at Euromaidan. Yarosh stated that the group had amassed a sizable arsenal of weapons; these include guns taken from police stations in Western Ukraine.

On 4 March 2014, the organization called on readers of its Vkontakte social-media page to "correct th[e] misunderstanding" that had been created in English and Russian Wikipedia that Right Sector is fascist and neo-Nazi.

According to political science professor Olexiy Haran, Right Sector's role in Ukrainian politics was "extremely exaggerated" by Ukrainians associated with Yanukovich.

Aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution

Yarosh was proposed as a deputy to the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine but was not appointed. He was then offered the position of deputy head of the National Security Council but rejected it as being beneath him.

In February 2014, Yarosh and the Israeli ambassador to Ukraine agreed to establish a "hotline" to prevent provocations and coordinate actions when issues arise. The group assists in the protection of Jewish sites in Odessa.

Russia has cited attacks by Right Sector on Russian speakers and Jews as the main reason it sent troops into Crimea.

On 7 March 2014, Tarasenko told Interfax-Ukraine that the "informal movement" would be transforming itself into a political party at a congress on 15 March.

On 11 March 2014, Russian Duma opposition leader Valery Rashkin called on Russian special services to "liquidate" Yarosh and Right Sector's leader for West Ukraine, UNA–UNSO member Oleksandr Muzychko. He said that Muzychko had fought for Chechen separatists against Russian troops and been charged with banditry. Muzychko (who was given the nom de guerre "Sachko Bilyi") had also become known for the farcical Right Sector video, "Sachko Communicates with a Prosecutor", in which he yells at a local prosecutor, snatches his tie and threatens to drag him to Independence Square with a rope.

Muzychko was shot to death in Rivne, Ukraine, on 24 March 2014. A witness told a local news service that a dozen men took Muzychko out of a cafe, handcuffed him, and beat him and two bodyguards. Others said that they later heard two shots fired near the cafe. Ukraine's Interior Ministry stated that he was shot after opening fire on police and Sokil special forces. He was captured alive and arrested but died from his wounds before paramedics arrived. Police said he was being detained on suspicion of organized crime links, hooliganism and threatening public officials.

Right Sector representatives held Interior Minister Arsen Avakov accountable for his death and vowed to avenge him. On 27 March 2014, Right Sector supporters demanded Avakov's resignation and tried to storm the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament). The next day, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Catherine Ashton, stated, "I strongly condemn the pressure by activists of the Right Sector who have surrounded the building of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Such an intimidation of the parliament is against the democratic principles and rule of law."

A few days later the group released an app that allows its members to organize tactics at events without being identified.

On 31 March 2014, a drunken Right Sector activist started shooting near a restaurant in central Kiev. Three people were wounded, including the deputy head of the Kiev City State Administration.

2014 pro-Russian conflict and 2014 Ukrainian election results

On 24 April 2014 Right Sector announced that it was moving its headquarters from Kiev to Dnipropetrovsk in order to monitor the situation in eastern Ukraine and that it had begun to form a special battalion 'Donbass' for its paramilitary operations in the War in Donbass.

On 22 April 2014 pro-Russian insurgents in Slovyansk detained American journalist Simon Ostrovsky for several days on suspicion of spying for the group.

Right Sector was officially registered as a political party by the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice on 22 May 2014. A regional chief told the Wall Street Journal that it was less interested in running for office than in getting politicians to keep their promises. In the 25 May 2014 presidential race Yarosh received 127,000 votes, 0.7% of the total cast. In a mid-May 2014 poll by Sociological group "RATING" the party itself scored 1.7%. On 13 June 2014 a prosecutor's office in Kiev was stormed by people who claimed to be Right Sector activists. Yarosh denied his organization's involvement and claimed that he could not have given orders to picket "the man who helped Euromaidan". On 15 October 2014 around 125 masked men with Right Sector insignia blocked the company Zaporizhstal; Right Sector denied involvement in this blockade and labelled it as an attempt to discredit the organization. In the 26 October 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election Yarosh as a Right Sector candidate won a parliament seat by winning single-member district number 39 located in Vasylkivka Raion with 29.76% of the votes. The party had competed in 35 districts. Yarosh did not join a faction in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament). In the same election, Boryslav Bereza, Right Sector's chief of information, also won a seat as an independent candidate by winning a district in Kiev with 29.44% of the votes. Bereza also did not join a faction. Right Sector did not take part in the October 2015 Ukrainian local elections.

2015 clash with Ukraine's special security service

On July 10, 2015, Ukrainian government forces clashed with Right Sector forces in the city of Mukacheve, located in Western Ukraine. Two people were killed. According to President Poroshenko's parliamentary faction leader Yuriy Lutsenko, these events "result[ed from] the conflict of interests between illegal armed groups and a mafia overtly cooperating with law enforcers." Some local leaders indicated the conflict ensued when Right Sector forces attempted to clamp down on the lucrative illegal cigarette smuggling trade to Western Europe, in which local law enforcement have been complicit. Immediate fallout from the events included the sacking of the leadership of the local Zakarpatya district customs service. Ukrainian MP Mykhailo Lanyo, fingered in the smuggling ring, reportedly fled Ukraine. Right Sector leader Yarosh called for calm, and denied that Right Sector troops were being withdrawn from eastern Ukraine.

After Yarosh's departure

Yarosh resigned as Right Sector leader on 11 November 2015. Late December 2015 he announced that he was forming a new political party that would start in February 2016. In February 2016 he started a new organisation called Governmental Initiative of Yarosh. The departure of Yarosh resulted in at least 20% of Right Sector members leaving with him. At a party congress of 19 March 2016 Andriy Tarasenko was elected chairman of Right Sector. Before Euromaidan he and Yarosh were the leading figures of Trident (Tryzub). Tarasenko vowed in March 2016 that Right Sector would take part in all elections in Ukraine.

Paramilitary operations

Right Sector seized military weaponry from an Interior Ministry arsenal in western Ukraine, near Lviv, towards the end of the Maidan revolution. Right Sector delivered some weapons to Ukrainian authorities in the aftermath of the revolution, and kept others. Following the collapse of the Yanukovych government, with police having largely abandoned the streets of Kiev, groups of young men, including members of Right Sector, patrolled them armed mostly with baseball bats and sometimes with guns. According to Yarosh, Right Sector has recruited retired officers of the interior ministry and the security agencies. He told Newsweek that "as in any army" it has specialists who are trained to use S-300 antiaircraft missiles.

Ukrainian Volunteer Corps

Right Sector has its own volunteer battalion that is fighting in the War in Donbass. It was formed late April 2014. On 19 July 2014 Right Sector said it was ready to contribute 5,000 people to fight, if the military provided suitable combat equipment. Right Sector lost twelve fighters when ambushed outside Donetsk in August 2014. Yarosh, the group's leader, vowed his group would avenge the deaths. On 17 August 2014 Right Sector accused the Interior Ministry of harbouring counterrevolutionary forces seeking to destroy the Ukrainian volunteer movement. It said that Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Yevdokimov's followers among the police had illegally searched or detained dozens of Right Sector volunteers and confiscated weapons they had taken in combat. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov replied, saying that he had already submitted a request to President Poroshenko that Yevdokimov be dismissed. Right Sector's military unit includes about fifty citizens of Russia and Belarus. Members come from all parts of Ukraine, including the Donbass and Crimea; Russia; other former Soviet republics; and Western countries. In December 2015, group leader Dmytro Yarosh announced that the 5th and 8th battalions, and the medical battalion, would be incorporated into the Armed Forces of Ukraine following his departure from Right Sector. The UVC, if possible, would become part of the National Guard of Ukraine and will in the near future report to the Ministry of Internal Affairs or would be merged as part of the Ukrainian Ground Forces.

Description by the party

The party's ideology is based on the Ukrainian national idea. The party believes that idea of a nation is more broad than the concept of people as ethnos, yet nothing even close to the cosmopolitan concept of "political nation". Nation is a conscious and effective unity of people united around the idea of freedom that is based on ethno-social and spiritually cultural factors.

Ukrainian nationalism is

The main component of Right Sector's natiocentric outlook is natio-existential Shevchenko Thought, based on protection, development, and revival of the nation based on national imperative or absolute order.

According to its literature, an idealistic worldview is intrinsic to Ukrainian nationalism.

Descriptions in scholarly work

Scholars Andreas Umland and Anton Shekhovstov have written that Right Sector formed as a loose collection of small groups, outside parliament, that were ultraconservative and included a neo-Nazi fringe. According to researcher Alina Polyakova, one of Right Sector's constituent groups, Tryzub, is composed of radical, right-wing nationalists. She writes that the Patriots of Ukraine, another constituent group, has organized attacks against foreigners or international students, and is connected to neo-fascist ideology and symbolism; scholar Volodymyr Ishchenko describes the group as neo-Nazi. Polyakova describes the ideology of the UNA-UNSO as nationalist, and sometimes including aspects of anarchism.

Shekhovstov has written that Patriot of Ukraine and Social National Assembly, which are racist and engage in real or symbolic violence against minorities, also oppose alcohol and drug use. (Also) according to Shekhovtsov "The main peculiarity of the Ukrainian far right is that its main enemy is not immigrants or national minorities, as often happens with the EU-based far right, but the Kremlin".

Descriptions in the press

Right Sector has been described by BBC News as a "Ukrainian nationalist group" and an "umbrella organization of far-right groups". Time has described it as a "radical right-wing group ... a coalition of militant ultra-nationalists", with an ideology that "borders on fascism". The New York Times has described it as a "nationalist group" and a "coalition of once-fringe Ukrainian nationalist groups".

The Guardian has identified it as a "nationalist Ukrainian group"; Reuters as a "far-right nationalist group"; Agence France Presse as a "far-right" group; and the Wall Street Journal as an "umbrella group for far-right activists and ultranationalists".

Die Welt, the New York Times, and Le Monde Diplomatique have described some of Right Sector's constituent groups as radical right-wing, neofascist, or neo-Nazi, but also that is distanced itself from antisemitism.

Writing for Foreign Policy, Hannah Kozlowska stated that Russian propaganda tried to demonize the Ukraine government and build a case for the annexation of Crimea by depicting Right Sector as a powerful neo-Nazi force bent on taking over the government. During the first half of 2014, Right Sector was the second-most mentioned political group in online Russian mass media.

The Associated Press has called it a "radical ultranationalist group ... demonized by Russian state propaganda as fascists". The AP reported that it had found no evidence of hate crimes by the group.

The Russian News & Information Agency has portrayed Right Sector as a "radical far right opposition group" and said that "Russian state media have tried to cast the demonstrations as a predominantly Fascism-inspired movement".

The RT (formerly Russia Today) TV News network has portrayed it as a "Ukrainian radical neo-fascist" group.

Other Ukrainians and political parties

In an interview, Yarosh stated that Right Sector and Svoboda "have a lot of common positions when it comes to ideological questions," but that Right Sector "absolutely do[es]n't accept certain racist things they [Svoboda members] share." Tarasenko cited Stepan Bandera, stating: "We are enemies to those saying that there [is] no Ukraine, or Ukrainians, or … Ukrainian language."

According to journalist Oleg Shynkarenko, Yarosh has indicated that Right Sector opposes homosexuality and has also implied that the right of the nation trumps human rights. The New York Times has written that "Right Sector, a coalition of ultranationalist and in some cases neo-Nazi organizations," has attempted to distance itself from anti-Semitism, citing Yarosh's pledge to fight racism in Ukraine. According to Spiegel Online, Dmytro Yarosh has stated that anti-semitism is not a part of Right Sector's ideology.

Tarasenko has stated that the group has no "phobias", that it respects every other nation, and that it supports the nation state model.

Some Ukrainians in southern and eastern Ukraine view Right Sector negatively and accuse its members of carrying out a war against the regions on behalf of the government in Kiev. The group took part in demonstrations in support of Israel in the city of Dnipropetrovsk on 28 July 2014, saying, "We, like Israel, learn unity; learn to love and defend their country, at war with the most heinous and vile enemy - terrorism."

Attitude towards Europe

Right Sector's website says that its members distrust the "imperial ambitions" of both Russia and the West. Yarosh told Spiegel Online that anti-Christian organizations are in active operation in the EU and that the European Commission (rather than the member nation) has control of lifestyles such as gay marriage. He does not see Europe or NATO as a potential partner and believes that they are part of a coalition against Ukraine.

Domestic policy

Right Sector has the position that the population should keep and bear arms, as in Switzerland. Yarosh told the New York Times that the organization's lawyers were drafting a bill modeled on Swiss notions of firearms possession.

Moral issues

According to historian and political scientist Andreas Umland Right Sector is ultra-Christian conservative and radical nationalist.

On 2 June 2015 the party sent an open letter to Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko asking him to cancel a pride parade to be held two days later citing "danger of provocations". The letter also quoted Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Sviatoslav Shevchuk stating "Ukraine rejects the false values as gender ideology". The letter also claimed Europeans still have an ambiguous attitude about "LGBT" stating "in Poland abortion is banned in general, not to mention same-sex marriages". In a Facebook post Right Sector leader Yarosh claimed the gay pride parade "spit on the graves of those who died and defended Ukraine"; and he promised that the group's members will "put aside other business in order to prevent those who hate family, morality, and human nature, from executing their plans. We have other things to do, but we’ll have to deal with this evil too," he wrote. Right Sector spokesman Artem Skoropadskyi stated about the pride parade "gay propaganda is destructive and doing harm to our Christian nation, we can’t allow that". The pride parade was held; during the march five policemen were injured in scuffles after unidentified people attacked the rally with smoke bombs and stones. Right Sector denounced the violence; Skoropadskyi stated about it "We can't beat weak persons like gays – that's a disgrace!".

Component groups

Academic and media sources have described some of Right Sector's constituent groups as nationalist, ultranationalist, neofascist, neo-Nazi, right-wing, far right, ultraconservative, or paramilitary. A plurality or majority of Right Sector's members belong to street fighting soccer-fan clubs or have no specific affiliation.

Sich

Sich (Carpathian Sich, Карпатська Січ) is a Cossack battalion from Transcarpathia. Its name derives from the Ukrainian Cossack term for a command and administrative center.

Tryzub (Trident)

Tryzub is a far-right Ukrainian paramilitary organization founded in 1993 by the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (former Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists). Its full name is the Stepan Bandera All-Ukrainian Organization ″Tryzub″. It states that its main goal is to create a Ukrainian united independent state. According to Tryzub, its enemies in achieving this goal are ″imperialism and chauvinism, fascism and communism, cosmopolitanism and pseudo-nationalism, totalitarianism and anarchy, any evil that seeks to parasitize on the sweat and blood of Ukrainians″.

Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self-Defense

The Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self-Defense (UNA–UNSO) is a Ukrainian political organization perceived as far-right in Ukraine and abroad. The faction supplied a volunteer battalion that in 1993 participated in the War in Abkhazia, which was depicted in a documentary film "Shadows of War" by Georgiy Gongadze. While the Ukrainian National Assembly (UNA) acted as the organization's legal political party - wing, on 22 May 2014 it merged into Right Sector. The UNA-UNSO continues to operate independently.

Legal status

After the start of Russia's hostilities towards Ukraine, many volunteers formed their own groups as territorial defense battalions. However, these battalions were legal parts of various Ukrainian security agencies, most of them serving under the Ministry of Defense or the Ministry of Interior. Their volunteers were required to follow orders of the commanders appointed to these agencies. In May 2014 the group became registered as a social organization under Ukrainian law.

The status of the Volunteer Ukrainian Corps is not official.